While direct mail and Yellow Pages ads have long been marketing staples, technology has completely revamped how kitchen and bath firms view marketing. Indeed, today’s most important marketing tools are just as likely to include interactive Web sites, blogs, YouTube, social networking sites, podcasts and more, as some of the more traditional favorites.

Changing demographics and attitudes, technological advances and a consumer mentality that demands instant access to information are key drivers of these changes. Yet marketing by technology is more than just a function of younger, tech-savvy consumers. A very old marketing concept – the importance of personalizing the message – has been essential to the evolution of technology as a marketing tool.

CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS

In the 2007 report “Foundations for Future Growth in the Remodeling Industry,” published by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, researchers looked at the demographics of the “remodeling customer.”

They found that, by the year 2015, slightly more than 45% of our customers will have been born during the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. While a slight majority may still wake up in 2015 with the morning paper and coffee, the up-and-coming generations of customers are turning to technology, rather than the traditional media, for their information.

Gen Xers and Echo Boomers (born in the 1970s-1990s) can attest to the fact that technology has shaped their world, their frame of reference and how they respond to messages – and therefore advertising. These people grew up in a world of hundreds of television channels, personal computers, the Internet, cell phones and other personal technologies. In addition, as these technologies became the norm, many of the Baby Boomers (born in the ’50s and ’60s) embraced them, creating a likely majority of kitchen and bath industry customers looking beyond traditional media for their news and information.

The 2007 book, “Connecting to the Net.Generation: What Higher Education Professionals Need to Know About Today’s Students,” by Reynol Junco and Jeanna Mastrodicasa, cited a survey of 7,705 U.S. college students, which found this relationship between Echo Boomers and technology:

• 97% own a computer.
  
• 97% have downloaded music and other media using peer-to-peer file sharing.
  
• 94% own a cell phone.
  
• 76% use instant messaging (IM) and social networking sites.
  
• 66.6% of college students have a Facebook account.
  
• 60% own some type of portable music and/or video device such as an iPod.
  
• 49% regularly download music and other media using peer-to-peer file sharing.
  
• 44% read blogs.
  
• 34% use Web sites as their primary source of news.
  
• 28% author a blog.
  
• 15% of IM users are logged on 24 hours a day/7 days a week.

These statistics illustrate a shift in the communication paradigm. The communication channels we rely upon to reach Baby Boomers won’t work to reach their kids and those older individuals who have adapted to the new paradigm.
Effective advertising was once about reaching people with a message over and over again so that they might act upon it if it were delivered often enough. We were complacent about being interrupted by “a word from our sponsor.”

We eventually got a bit more sophisticated and only wanted messages that pertained to our demographic group. It was okay to be delivered a message as a male, aged 35-54, while listening to a classic rock radio station. And advertisers delivered the same messages over and over until we believed them.

But now technology has changed the way we accept advertising. Today, effective advertising is about reaching the correct person at the correct time with the correct message delivered in the correct manner. We perform an online search, and expect immediate results. We decide to buy music or a movie; we can do so at our keyboards within a matter of minutes. Technology has changed the communication paradigm and our expectations. And no one understands this better than the generations that are growing up in the midst of it.

For savvy kitchen and bath marketers, now is the time to embrace new technology and use its marketing power to reach your current customers, as well as those coming down the pike.

A successful kitchen and bath marketer will develop an integrated marketing strategy designed to reach those embracing the latest technologies, along with the more traditional customer base. As Max Isley, CMKBD, president of Hampton Kitchens in Raleigh, NC says, “I am not ready to dump the traditional [marketing channels] for the latest technology. We use both to an extent and I can usually guess – with a high degree of accuracy – which was most effective in bringing in a [specific] new client. Our older customers respond to the more traditional messages in newspapers, the Yellow Pages and the like, while our younger customers are driven by the Internet and e-mails.”

Mark Ergmann, president of Coastal Kitchen & Bath Designs in York, ME, adds that, “Generally, people who come to us from our Web site are five to 10 years younger than our average customer.”

As an industry, we are taking baby steps employing new technology in our daily marketing. A look at some of the strategies and tactics implemented throughout the country may provide the spark you need to become more successful moving forward.

ONLINE PRESENCE

For kitchen and bath professionals, a Web site is a must, but it is only the beginning. The days of the standard “brochure” sites are quickly coming to a close, as your customers are looking for more. They want more information and more interactivity.

Rob Baugher, JC, CGR, CGB, GMB, CAPS, CGA, owner and CEO of Baugher Design and Remodel in Birmingham, AL, has added an RSS Feed to his site. “RSS, which stands for Real Simple Syndication, is a way for my clients to ‘subscribe’ to my Web site. That is, as we update and add new material, those visitors who have signed up for RSS get a message with the new information and a link to the Web site. This has been a great way to keep my clients and potential clients informed and engaged.”

Baugher also intends to add podcasts to his site in the near future. “We have a Saturday morning radio show on a local station. The natural progression is to place podcasts on the site – expanding our audience, and our reputation as remodeling experts, along with it.”

Nicolas Mottet, advertising manager for WarmlyYours, manufacturer of electric floor heating systems, says that WarmlyYours has “always found the Internet to be among the most effective marketing channels for us. We recently invested in a proprietary Flash-based technology to let homeowners or designers design floor plans online and simply drag-and-drop predesigned fixtures into their plans. This tool has proven hugely successful as over 3,000 homeowners and designers use it every month to design their room, and get an instant quote on our electric floor heating systems.”